Monday, March 5, 2012

Dress progress and more

No pictures again, sorry. Craft update interspersed with life updates and an unintended rant.

I started working on my dress again yesterday. Finally. I don't know if I ever mentioned that it's my wedding dress. I started working on it before we had announced our engagement. In fact, the original plan was to get married and not tell anyone until afterward. But real life kind of got in the way, and we had to postpone due to some health issues and health insurance issues and financial problems due to said health and health insurance issues, so we finally decided just to announce to everyone that we were going to get married. We're still not sure when it's going to happen. Our original date was October 21. That came and went, and we later announced our engagement in November (and most people thought it had just happened then). At that point, we planned for May of this year, assuming that things would be worked out by then, but so far there is no end in sight.

I don't really feel like getting into it in much detail in a public post, but basically with all of Aaron's health problems we can't afford to get him private health insurance (preexisting conditions and all that nonsense), and if we get married now, my income is too high for him to continue to qualify for Access. We are working now on trying to get him a permanent disability so that he will have insurance that doesn't cost me $450 a month for just him, which is ridiculous. So we're hoping the disability thing works out, although I don't see it being a speedy process, and we're hoping he'll eventually be able to go back to work and money won't be as much of an issue (although no matter how much money you make, $450 a month for a single person to have insurance is outrageous). But in the meantime, we have to wait to see if the disability thing pans out before we can make any plans to get married. Because if it doesn't, then he's going to have to find a job, which he has been trying to do unsuccessfully for months. (He has kind of a limited range of things he can do at this point.) So either way, I don't see us getting married in May, since it is already March and we have to apply for disability, probably get denied, get a lawyer, and apply again (apparently that is how it works?), etc. And if he doesn't get the disability, then he's going to have to find a job, which I'm not optimistic about time-wise either. I'm thinking it's still going to be a few months. That is depressing.

[On a side note: I don't wish anyone to be sick or hurt or anything, but to anyone who thinks it's unreasonable or "socialist" (or whatever it is that offends you about the idea) for everyone to have affordable healthcare, I think you would feel differently if you or someone in your life was in the position where they needed it. I think you would feel differently if it was making you put your marriage or your plans for your future on hold. We're certainly not looking for handouts. I have a decent job. He had a decent job before he got sick. We're not just lazy or irresponsible. I am very financially responsible. I pay all my bills on time. I own my own home. I do not use credit cards. I am not looking for money. I am not looking for other people to erase my mistakes. Unfortunately, as responsible as I am with money, I still only have so much to work with, which means that he has to be on Access. So you're paying for that anyway, so thanks I guess. I would like nothing more than to qualify for affordable insurance, pay for it ourselves, and actually get married, but I guess this works better for everyone else. I hope that makes you happy at least because I know I'm super thrilled about it.]

Anyway, back to the dress. We still intend to have a very small wedding, witnesses only, at the magistrate and then probably dinner with family afterwards and eventually a get-together for friends and family at some point. But I still wanted a nice dress, and I decided to make my own because that's what I do. Anyone who has been reading this for a while has read all the difficulties I have had with it, mainly that it was too big and I had to basically resew the entire dress smaller. Then I got discouraged and depressed about having to postponethe wedding and pretty much just put the dress away and didn't want to deal with it for a long time. I'm still depressed about it, knowing that we are probably going to postpone AGAIN, and honestly at this point I wonder if we will ever be able to get married. (I don't mean to make it sound like I sit around constantly feeling sorry for myself about this. I do sometimes, but really we're still together and we're still happy, and it doesn't really matter that we aren't married because our relationship and everything is exactly the same as it would be if we were married. But it would still be nice to make it official, and it's still just annoying and offensive that it's such a dumb thing preventing us.)

So the dress has been sitting and waiting to be finished, but I had a lot of trouble mustering any enthusiasm for working on it, knowing that there is still no plans for me to be wearing it any time soon. Finally, though, yesterday I started thinking about it and figured why not. I pulled it out and got to work. I sewed down a part of the bodice facing and then added the zipper. That's mostly all I had to do except the hem, which I will get to in the next few days. (I have school the next 2 nights, so it won't be until at least Wednesday.) It took maybe an hour and a half yesterday, and now it's pretty much done. So all that putting it off and putting it off for a couple hours' work. Silliness.

It fits very nicely, and I think it looks great. I decided against wearing the petticoat with it (I don't even remember what I did and didn't mention about the dress because it's been months since I even looked at it, but I bought a fluffy pink petticoat to potentially wear under it). The dress is not full enough at the bottom so instead of puffing out really cutely with a petticoat, it just looks like a big bell shape at the bottom and is not that cute at all. But at least I have a petticoat for future dresses, which I will make with big full skirts! I did a crappy job in the zipper, but who's going to look at the zipper? Otherwise it looks really good though, and I'm so happy with it. I can't wait to wear it. I don't think I'll be showing off finished pictures until I eventually (hopefully, someday) get married. Rest assured that it is lovely, and I hope you get to see it someday.

Sorry for the ranting, but this is something that is hugely important to me, and to think that people don't care or understand that there are other people going through things like this, not just looking for free insurance and handouts, really upsets me.